Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Corporal Works
of Mercy:

Frequently Asked Questions: Seven Deadly Sins

Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) described Seven Deadly Sins in his Moralia
in Job.

1. Superbia

Pride

2. Invidia

Envy

3. Ira

Anger

4. Avaritia

Avarice

5. Tristia

Sadness

6. Gula

Gluttony

7. Luxuria

Lust

(Moralia in Job, XXXI cap. xlv).

The sin Tristia was later replaced by Accidia, or Sloth
(Wenzel (1967), 38). This sin was taken from earlier catalogues of vice, in
particular, the eight evil thoughts listed by Evaagrius (346-99), and the eight
principal vices proposed by the mid fourth-century writer Cassian (Wenzel (1967),
14-21). Some of the iconography of the Sins was derived from the descriptions
of the Battles between the Virtues and Vices in the Psychomachia by the
fourth-century poet Prudentius.

2. Why were they called Deadly?

The church made a division between sins which were venial and could
be forgiven without the need for the sacrament of Confession and those which
were capital and merited damnation. Capital or Deadly Sins were so called
because they could have a fatal effect on an individuals spiritual health.
British wall paintings stressed the connection between committing the Deadly
Sins and ending up in Hell.

A fourteenth-century text, known as Dan Jon Gaytrygges Sermon,
associated with the Constitutions issued by Archbishop Thoresby for the Diocese
of York in 1357, stated:

You might imagine that the church would want to prevent people even thinking
about such spiritually dangerous actions. But there were two good reasons why
churchmen felt it was important to educate people:

so that they would not commit these sins without realising how serious
they were,

so that they would be able to confess any such sins and gain absolution.

This desire to educate the laity about the Seven Deadly Sins can be particularly
associated with the Fourth Lateran Council (1214). This Council established
the practice of annual confession for all, declaring that:

All the Faithful of both sexes shall, after they have reached the age
of discretion, faithfully confess all their sins at least once a year to their
own (parish) priest and perform to the best of their ability the penance imposed,
receiving reverently at least at Easter the sacrament of the Eucharist, unless
perchance at the advice of their priest they may for a good reason abstain
for a time from its reception; otherwise they shall be cut off from the Church
during life and deprived of Christian burial in death. Wherefore, let this
salutary decree be published frequently in the churches, that no one may find
in the plea of ignorance a shadow of excuse.

Let the priest be discreet and cautious that he may pour wine and oil
into the wounds of one injured after the manner of a skilful physician, carefully
inquiring into the circumstances of the sinner and sin, from the nature of
which he may understand what kind of advice to give and what remedy to apply,
making use of different experiments to heal the sick one.

(Schroeder (1937), 259-60)

For this programme to be carried out, priests had to be educated to counsel
the penitents and the laity had to be able to recognise and recall their sins.
To address this need, English bishops issued Constitutions setting out
syllabuses of material which they required their clergy to learn and to teach
to their congregations (Gibbs and Lang (1934), 105-30). Several of these survive
from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Perhaps the most famous were the
Lambeth Constitutions of 1281, often known by their opening phrase, Ignorencia
Sacerdotum, and promulgated in the Archdiocese of Canterbury (Powicke and
Cheney (1964), II, 900-5).

The Seven Deadly Sins featured prominently in such syllabuses or catechisms.
For example the 1229 Synodal Statues of Bishop William de Blois for the
Diocese of Worcester stated that after confession the priest should instruct
the penitent about the Seven Sins, in order that he may more easily call to
mind the ways in which he has sinned (Powicke and Cheney (1964), 172).

4. When did the sins start to appear in wall painting?

The earliest surviving British wall paintings of the Seven Deadly Sins
date from the first half of the fourteenth century. For example, the paintings
at Cranborne in Dorset and Wotton Wawen in Warwickshire appear to date from
the 1340s (Tristram (1955), 160, 268). However, the thirteenth-century writer,
Durandus of Mende (d.1296), commended the practice of painting the Tree of Vice
on the walls of a church, suggesting it was already familiar in some parts of
Europe (Rationale Divinorum Officiorum (1859), 27). The Seven Deadly
Sins are included in a sculptural programme of the battle of the Vices and Virtues
on the chapter house portal at Salisbury Cathedral (c1260-70) (Green
(1968), 1534).

Although there is a gap of over a century between the Fourth Lateran Council
(1215) and the first British wall paintings in parish churches, this delay may
be related to the chronology found in the dissemination of didactic literature.
Only in the fourteenth century do vernacular versions of the syllabuses appear
in a form suitable for teaching the congregation directly. For example, the
Oculus Sacerdotis compiled in the 1320s by the Berkshire parish priest,
William of Pagula, was the first compendium for parish priests, which presented
the Lambeth Constitutions of 1281 in a form they could use in their parish (Boyle
(1955), 94).

5. Where did the wall painters get their ideas?

Although none of the paintings described in this data-base are identical, it
is clear that several of them follow the same basic form or schema,
for example, showing the Sins as branches of an infernal tree or showing the
Works of Mercy between the spokes of a wheel. These schema were developed in
manuscript illumination from the eleventh century onwards. Many of these didactic
diagrams were intended for monastic education and disseminated in such spiritual
encyclopaedia as the Speculum Virginium. Their combination of single
words with visual images made them suitable for those who knew little Latin.
Their organisation of information into discrete portions and the inclusion of
startling images, such as caricatures and grotesque devils, made them memorable
(Carruthers (1990), 60, 85, 257: Clanchy (1993), 174, 291). The schema themselves
often suggested the relationships between the elements they presented and enabled
the expression of opposites (Camille (1985), 137). For example, the Tree of
Sins grows from the root of Pride and each of the Seven Deadly Sins then gives
rise to further misdeeds (see Schema and the Notes
to the Database).

Although many of these schema were first developed in a monastic context,
they were disseminated to the secular clergy, then to literate lay people.
For example, a beautiful rendering of the visual encyclopaedia Speculum
Theologiae collected by John of Metz is found in the Psalter of Robert
de Lisle (d. 1343) (Sandler (1983)).

We should not imagine a medieval wall painter on his scaffolding holding
a copy of a luxurious illustrated book. Instead, he probably used a pattern
or model. It is not improbable that some of these models were similar
to or derived from those used by manuscript painters. However, many of
these complex and wordy diagrams needed to be modified to make them suitable
for monumental display to an often illiterate audience. Such additional
figures are included in some manuscripts of the later thirteenth century
and may have been intended to prompt penitential feelings in the viewer
(OReilly (1994), 387). In the context of parochial wall painting
this pruning of subsidiary branches and the prominent display
of personifications and additional figures created the startling images
in this database, with their combination of formal settings and graphic
caricatures.

(click to enlarge)

The Wheel of the Ten Ages
of Man from the De Lisle Psalter.

(Jones (1853), pl.V)

The Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Corporal Works of Mercy were not the only subjects
related to the catechism to be displayed in monumental art. A large corpus of
carved fonts depicting the Seven Sacraments survive from the fifteenth century
(Nichols (1994)). Subjects such as the Seven Sacraments and the Seven Corporal
Works of Mercy are also found in fifteenth-century glass (Marks (1993), 79-80).

6. Who commissioned them?

Unfortunately the surviving evidence is scanty. No wills or churchwardens
accounts relating to the paintings in this database have yet been identified.
None of the paintings include the figures of donors, although the murals at
Trotton are part of a larger scheme in which the kneeling figures of Sir Thomas
Camoys (d.1421) and his son Richard and wife Joan are shown.

Most of the other paintings at Trotton are heraldic and chivalric images,
celebrating the lineage, achievements and connections of the Camoys family.
Even in an instance like this, we do not know who actually chose the morality
subjects. Perhaps the Camoys family felt the need to contrast the proud
chivalric images with paintings condemning sin and encouraging virtue,
or perhaps the local parish priest insisted on a more balanced scheme.
At Arundel the paintings follow the rebuilding of the church by Thomas
Fitzalan (5th Earl of Arundel), and at Milton Abbas they are associated
with the remodelling carried out by Abbot Middleton (1481-1525). However,
we do not know to what extent these individuals were personally involved
in selecting subjects for display.

Late medieval wills suggest that lay patrons felt a degree of freedom
in selecting images for their churches, but the informal negotiation which
may have gone on between priests, churchwardens and individuals has left
no record. In some instances it is clear that congregations regarded their
priest as a source of advice about the selection of images (Duffy (1989),
160). In other instances, such as the early fifteenth-century eucharistic
wall paintings at Friskney in Lincolnshire, the scheme may have been devised
by the scholarly, clerical donor to educate the congregation (Rubin (1991),
131).

(Click to Enlarge)

Sir Thomas Camoys (d.1421)
and his son and daughter-in-law. Nave, south wall, Trotton, Sussex.

(M.Gill)

7. Why 7?

After three, seven is the number of greatest religious significance in ancient
Judaism (Kirschbaum (1972), IV, 154). God made the world in six days and rested
on the seventh, hallowing it. The number seven consequently had connotations
of completeness or perfection. It was also significant in the Ancient World,
associated with the seven planets, the seven ages of man and the Seven Wonders
of the World. Given its prominence in Jewish and Antique thought, it is not
surprising that it retained its significance in the early Church (Kirschbaum
(1972), IV, 154-5). The Seven Deadly Sins became one of a number of important
groups of seven current in the medieval church, for example, the Seven canonical
hours, the Seven petitions of the Lords Prayer, the Seven Joys and Seven
Sorrows of the Virgin and, of course, the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy.